


In Absentia

by Avocadou (roserising)



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Episode: s01e10 Nelson v. Murdock, M/M, Matt is gay, Pining, Sadness, post-episode 10 coda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 04:42:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3882715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roserising/pseuds/Avocadou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>In Absentia</i> – while absent.</p>
<p>He walked out that door two days ago, and you can still hear it slamming shut.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Absentia

You don’t fight it. He leaves, and you stay, and you don’t fight it because you think maybe he’s right to leave, even if the gaping wound his absence makes feels worst than any of the actual gaping wounds on your flesh, and you step as carefully around it, trying to let it heal.

It doesn’t work. You avoid him, but his absence is loud as a gunshot, and you feel like you’re off-balance, perpetually. Karen asks about it, and you say you’re not sure, that you had a fight, _it’s my fault_ comes too easily to feel right. But you knew this would maybe happen. Sure, you had deluded yourself into thinking it might be easier, or better, but there’s a reason why you kept it a secret for so many years. You know how it sounds. “I’m blind, but I have these other enhanced senses and it’s my version of seeing.” But all anybody hears – all he heard – is “I can see.”

And that’s not right, actually, not really, but you’re not sure how to describe it after spending so many years tricking yourself into forgetting that you’re missing anything. You’ve spent so long telling yourself that it’s almost like seeing, because that makes your loss seem less painful and it makes you feel less like you’re missing something, and most days you aren’t as acutely aware of the loss as you used to be, so you don’t really think to qualify it. It helps that you’re hurt, that your head got knocked around, that you feel worse than you did when Claire found you in a dumpster.

You fucked up. You know you fucked up, but he’s already gone and you already lost your chance to do anything about it, so all you can do is try to move on – by yourself, off-balance, ignoring a wound that won’t close.

You pray, a lot. You don’t talk to your priest because you don’t know how to express this pain without everything coming apart in the process – this wound is so wide that if you let it open, it might kill you. It really might. So you pray alone in the back of the church or else in your apartment, and kneeling hurts like Hell but you still do it, and you hold the rosary so hard you can feel the imprints in your hand after, where the beads pressed into your flesh.

You fight. You fight, and fight, and fight. Because you feel less off-balance when you’re the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen than you do when you’re Matt Murdock and the guy you’ve been in love with since college just walked out of your life and slammed the door behind him.

Yeah, you’ve kind of been saving that headline for another time, but it’s really hard to ignore when Foggy’s no longer there, making you push it back so far it aches. It’s hard to pretend when you don’t have anyone to pretend to.

You’ve been in love with him since you were college roommates, since he was the first person to really just treat you like a human being and not a.. a Precious Memories porcelain boy, ready to fall off the shelf and break at any moment. He was the first person to really trust you to be able to handle jokes and pranks and walking around campus absolutely smashed at one in the morning (or later). (At the same time, he supported you, guided you when you needed it, told you what people were doing, what was happening on the TV show he was watching, and he didn’t make a big deal out of it. Which was, itself, a _big deal_ to you.) At some point in all of that, and you don’t remember exactly when that was, you realized that you were completely in love with this guy. At about the same time, you realized you could absolutely never tell him.

You’re pretty sure he’s straight, and you know for a fact that you are way too Catholic to do anything but pretend that you aren’t homosexual, that you’ve ever been attracted to any of the girls you lied about going out with so you wouldn’t have to tell Foggy about the hours you spent in the gym. So you hid it, and you did a damned good job of it. You’re almost positive he has no idea.

(If he knew, he wouldn’t have left. You tell yourself that, and you know it’s a lie. You can feel yourself lying. But sometimes the lie is better than the truth.)

He leaves, and you stay, and the guilt is almost enough to drag you under. You are in love with someone who walked out your door and might never come back.

You are in love with someone who exists in your life now as an absence that you can feel, palpable, everywhere.

And you know that it’s your fault that he’s gone. It’s your fault. And all you can do is pray, and pray, and pray they he comes back to you.

Maybe this time you’ll tell him the truth. The whole truth.


End file.
